The subtractive process of color formation is customarily employed in multi-colored photographic elements. The resulting yellow, magenta, and cyan image dyes are formed in silver halide layers that are sensitive to blue, green, and red radiation, respectively. It is known in the photographic art that these color images are customarily obtained by a coupling reaction between an oxidized aromatic primary amine developer and appropriate color-forming dye image forming color couplers.
A typical silver halide color photographic element contains multiple layers of light-sensitive photographic silver halide emulsions that are sensitized to the appropriate actinic radiation. For example, the appropriate yellow, magenta, and cyan dye images are generally provided in the photographic element as separate blue light sensitive, green light sensitive, and red light sensitive color records comprising the appropriate dye image forming color couplers. Non-light sensitive interlayers are commonly incorporated between adjacent color records in order to reduce color contamination between color records.
Thus, typically, there is a gelatin-containing interlayer between the blue light sensitive color record and the green light sensitive color record, and then another gelatin-containing interlayer between the green light sensitive color record and the red light sensitive color record.
While there has been extensive research relating to the various dye image forming color couplers and other components of the silver halide emulsion layers, there have been only modest efforts to optimize the interlayers for various properties. Typically, the interlayers contain one or more hydrophilic colloids (such as a gelatin), a hardener, and sometimes a non-volatile coupler solvent such as dibutyl phthalate or diunadecyl phthalate, UV absorbers, and oxidized developing agent scavengers such as ballasted hydroquinone or aminophenols as described for example in U.S. Pat. No. 5,962,210 (Hahm et al.).
Latex polymers have been incorporated into photographic elements for various purposes. For example, they have been incorporated into light sensitive silver halide emulsion layers, topmost non-light sensitive overcoat layers, and in backside (non-imaging) layers, of black-and-white and color photographic elements.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,310,639 (Lushington et al.) describes the use of low glass transition temperature polymers in non-light sensitive stress absorbing layers in color negative photographic films to reduce pressure fog while maintaining scratch resistance.
Color silver halide photographic papers or reflective prints have been commonly put into wedding and family albums and on walls and desks for generations. As the industry has wrestled with shrinking volumes and uses of traditional photographic prints, it has found new ways to display and store photographic color prints. One of those ways is what is known as “photobooks” in which one or more reflective color photographs or “prints” are bound and displayed in book form with each image typically covering opposing pages of the photobook. When the photobook is opened, it lies flat with a crease down the middle of the color image.
This crease or fold in the image does not generally create a problem in low density regions of an image, but in the high density (neutral) regions such as gray, black, and dark brown regions of the image, containing significant amount of cyan dye formation, it has been observed that the crease or fold line can show an unwanted cyan-color line. This line can vary in intensity depending upon the method of folding or creasing and the color and density of the image in the fold or crease line. This is an objection or “flaw” in otherwise high quality color photographic prints spread across the two open pages of a photobook.
It is believed that this problem is caused from the force of creasing, folding, and photobook making, which interacts with the series of light-sensitive layers in the color photographic element forming the color print. In particular, it is believed that the fold or crease causes air voids in the cyan dye-containing layer (formed from a red light sensitive silver halide emulsion layer). Once these air voids are formed, light can be reflected back so that the light does not penetrate lower into the photographic print layers to provide accurate color rendition from the combination of magenta, yellow, and cyan dyes in the combination of color dye layers. Because the cyan dye-containing layers are the topmost dye layers in the color photographic prints, the human eye observes only a cyan “defect” in the fold or crease where magenta or yellow dyes are formed in high concentration.
Thus, there is a need to solve this problem in reflective color photographic elements (color prints) so that the color prints can be readily folded or creased with reduced occurrence of the unwanted cyan line defect being seen in the fold or crease line. Solving this problem would make photobooks more attractive to consumers.